25/1/06
Guten Tag snow bunnies and funky Alp monsters
Well we are currently on a train in Switzerland coming down from Zermatt in the Swiss Alps after bumming around the Matterhorn all morning and all we can say is… Gee we had a deprived childhood growing up without snow in Queensland.
OK… sure beaches and surf is nice, but since Avril only saw snow for the first time at age 21 in Denver and I only saw snow for the first time at age 27 in Antarctica… being in the Alps has made us wet our panties so much that we’ve left little yellow snow trails everywhere…
Yesterday we took the amazing Glacier Express train which winds for 7½ hours through the Alps from glitzy St Moritz in the east to Zermatt at the base of the Matterhorn in the south-west… And it was ABSOLUTELY amazing!!!!
It’s considered to be one of the great train rides of the world and the scenery was so beautiful that we squealed so much that I think we both prolapsed a sphincter or two…
However today, when we cruised up to Gornergrat mountain where heaps of James Bond movies have been filmed to check out the Matterhorn, we realised that we are DEFINITELY the lamest lamearses in the Alps since we’ve never skiied or snowboarded before, so we completely stood out like a thawed bum.
Seriously… being the only non-skiers amongst a hundred skiers on the cable car made us so embarrassed and uncomfortable that it was just like being at school when you feel like you need to lie to just to avoid being the odd one out…
We had so many people looking at us funny since we were the only ones without skis, that we were totally ready to tell them that the dog ate our skis had anyone asked… Yeah OK… we are such try hard wannabees…
However, it really doesn’t Matter-horn since we’ve had great weather here and although it’s been minus 15 degrees celsius, the snow and blue skies and amazing scenery have totally warmed us up.
Not only that but Avril has totally been feeling all fuzzy and warm from all the cheese and chocolate… not to mention also from perving at all the Swiss guys that she reckons are Ski Gods…
And even though we’ve been to the Andes and the Himalayas, we’d have to say that the Swiss Alps are DEFINITELY the most beautiful mountains we have ever seen!!!
In fact, we totally LOVE Switzerland… but we couldn’t live here otherwise we’d totally get FAT!!!
Anyhows… for the last week, we’ve also been staying with our friends Frank and Corinne near a pretty little village called Lenzberg just west of Zurich which has been great since they have been FANTASTIC hosts and filled us up with fondue, rosti, and sausages, AND also taken us sledding at Engelberg and night snowshoe walking in Zug.
…AND they also have the nicest house that we have ever seen.
They basically took a battery chicken factory and built it themselves into a huge 3 story studio type house with huge windows that just bathed us in glorious sunlight which was great since I think we had started getting depressed from living in little shitty Irish stone boxes with bleak Irish weather for the last few weeks.
Man me and Avril were so cranky in Ireland and we had been fighting more than we ever had in the last 10 years we have been together. But incredibly once we got to Switzerland and we started getting a bit of sun (…and Swiss chocolate) it felt like a massive cloud had lifted off us. Man it made such a huge difference to us emotionally that a psychiatrist would probably say that we were suffering from Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) from the fuckarsed bleak Irish weather since we were really depressed from lack of sunlight… No wonder Irish folk live in a pub and just drown their misery in alcohol!
Personally, my astute medical diagnosis is that we probably have solar based superpowers and sex appeal, so lack of sun is more crippling to us than kryptonite or a well placed nipple pinch…
In anycase we are completely re-energised and totally psyched to travel again which has been great!!! So much so that we actually also took a small detour to Liechtenstein as well, which is the small country only 15km wide between Switzerland and Austria.
There really wasn’t too much to see there, but our main reason for going was because it is now the 33rd country that we have been to and we’ve decided that we aren’t going home until we hit the 50 country mark since we are determined to beat our friends Kendall and also Brad Jones who have also hit the big 50 mark… Who said we were competitive…????
Anyway, tomorrow we are off to London and then to Tunisia so hopefully our next travelblog will be from the Sahara desert…
… Holy Cow… Alps and the Sahara in the same week… we must be un poco loco…
Whoops… gotta go and change trains…
Auf Wiedersehen and other fuzziness…
Fondue Chu
Alpine Avril
PS Our Swiss photos are at this link and our Liechtenstein Pics are here.
PPS Thanks to Frank and Corinne and Napoleon for being fantastic hosts!!!!
PPPS Sophie… it’ll be up to you to turn us into snowboarding superheroes when we get to Quebec!!!
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